Wow, I haven't written one of these in a while, have I? To be honest, the main reason for the lack of updates has been the migration of most of my spur of the moment thoughts to Twitter - It's hardly the stuff of legends but... well, that's kind of the point isn't it?
That aside, it seems that the non-stop insanity of work and the various projects to which I tether myself never ceases, happily swallowing up vast chunks of my existence. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the lot has been my humble anime 'blog, which has somehow turned into quite a monster in its own right when it comes to drawing in traffic - What was simply a fun distraction which I doubted I'd keep up for long has become a (thankfully still fun) behemoth with over 900 episodic reviews of anime and counting. As per usual, watching something grow from nothing to several thousand visitors per day is hugely pleasurable in its own right (beyond the fact that I genuinely enjoy writing about this stuff), and I'm currently resisting the urge to start throwing advertising on it and thus corrupting the wide-eyed innocence which is currently still holds in my "empire".
Funnily enough, this ramping up of the depth of my anime and Japanese culture interest has come at a perfect time, with UK Anime relaunching and looking to really push itself into the UK industry limelight. I've really thrown myself into doing my bit to make that transition to something bigger and better with gusto (perhaps too much so - bad control freak Andy, bad!), and I'm genuinely excited as to what could come of the hard work of the whole team there if we can keep it up and keep getting noticed for all the right reasons. Even beyond such ambitions, there's something hugely enjoyable about writing reviews and articles that aren't grounded on a technical foundation - Whereas my work for Elite Bastards generally requires precision and clarity, both UK Anime and my anime 'blog allow me to let loose with the full force of my vocabulary while having a bit more fun with my use of language.
That's not to say that Elite Bastards has been languishing, although things are pretty quiet on that front in a sense - The credit crunch is hurting in terms of advertising revenue and visitors, while the industry as a whole is in a huge lull before Windows 7 and DirectX 11 will make things interesting again. No doubt come the autumn I'll be firing on all the cylinders there again.
All of this is without my "real" job, which is also becoming increasingly busy - lots of meetings, winning big contracts and so on and so forth. It's still an interesting project for me in its own right, so no matter how much I whinge at times I can't really complain.
So, there you have it - Pretty much the last year in a nut shell (or at least the stuff worth/safe for mention on here). What will the next year hold? More of the same, I would imagine. Unless someone fancies whisking me off to Japan for six months...
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